by Nicole Auerbach, USA TODAY Sports

by Nicole Auerbach, USA TODAY Sports

The expansion of college athletic conferences in recent years created problems for the NCAA men's basketball committee when it came to seeding the bracket for the NCAA tournament.

Rules restricting how early in the tournament teams from the same conference could face one another limited matchmaking flexibility sometimes forced teams to get moved up or down from their "true seed line".

On Thursday, the NCAA announced changes to its bracketing principles aimed to protect true seeding. Men's basketball committee chair Ron Wellman said Thursday on a conference call that "90% of seed-line moves that occurred in last 3 years would have been eliminated if new principles had been in effect."

Last season, a 26-8, Pac-12 tournament champion Oregon team was the prime example of a surprising seed-line change, dropping down to a No. 12 seed after a "lengthy, lengthy discussion," according to Wellman. The Ducks went on to upset No. 5 Oklahoma State and No. 4 Saint Louis en route to a Sweet 16 appearance.

"The one discomfort the committee had practically annually was the seeds in and honoring the true seed list that the committee put together," Wellman said. "Then, (we were) having to move teams as little as one line to as much as two lines because of the bracketing principles we needed to follow.

"We do believe that the seed lines are going to be honored to a greater extent -- a much greater extent -- than they have been in the past."

The committee hopes to do that that by relaxing a few previous restrictions. For starters, teams in the same league that only meet once during the season (including the league's postseason tournament) can face each other as early as the round of 32. If teams met twice during the season, they can't meet until the regional semifinals. If they played three times, they cannot meet until the regional championship.

In another move aimed at protecting teams' true seeds, the NCAA says it will only protect the top four teams from being in the same region in each conference if they are seeded on the first four lines (meaning that they are the top 16 teams in the field, in the committee's eyes). In the past, the top three teams from each league were always separated, regardless of seeding, sometimes forcing lower seeds to be moved up or down to accommodate the rule.

"It is important we avoid the top teams from leagues receiving multiple bids to the tournament from playing one another when they are seeded in the first quadrant," Wellman said in a statement. "But after those first four lines are seeded, we want to remain as true to the seed lines as possible. Too often we have had to move teams up and down a line because we have been limited by our principles on teams from the same league. These changes will give us permissions we have not had previously."

Since 2007, there have been 12 instances of a conference placing seven or more teams into the NCAA tournament field. (In the tournament's history, this has only happened 18 teams, another testament to growing conferences.) The NCAA says an average of 10 teams per year have moved up or down at least one seed line in the bracket in tournament history.

"Some of the movement has been a result of trying to place teams in the First Four the past three years but much of it has been caused by conference-related restrictions," Wellman said.

Rules regarding rematches of non-conference regular-season games have also been relaxed; those rematches will now be allowed in the round of 32.

The committee's final tweak affects the First Four teams only. The committee has given itself power to relax "any principle" if two or more First Four teams are from the same conference.

"We feel the seed lines are really important to the competitiveness of the tournament," Wellman said on Thursday's call. "The committee spends hours scrubbing the seeds. ... At the end of the day, we feel the seeds are in proper order. An awful lot of work has been done to put those teams in that particular seed and seed line. Then, we go to bracketing and often times we move them either within the line or two lines (BYU in 2012), or one line.

"There's great discomfort in that, which obviously led to the discussion ... and our change of the principles regarding bracketing."

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Nicole Auerbach, a national college basketball reporter for USA TODAY Sports, is onTwitter @NicoleAuerbach.